The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/70101
WOMEN'S BASKETBALL f ever a team needed a win, the Michigan women's basketball team needed one the night of Feb. 9, when it traveled to Lincoln, Neb., to take on the Cornhuskers. The Wolverines — after the best start in program history (12-2) — had hit a bit of a skid, dropping three of four games, including a heartbreak- ing 65-63 loss to in-state rival Michi- gan State Feb. 5, to fall to a middling 6-5 in conference play. A quality road win at the No. 13 team in the country would go a long way in bolstering Michigan's wan- ing NCAA Tournament hopes. And that's exactly what the Wolverines got, upsetting Nebraska 63-52. The Cornhuskers had the No. 3 U-M Grabs Huge Road Win At Nebraska I scoring offense (73.5 points per game) in the Big Ten as of Feb. 13. Against the Wolverines, though, they managed just 12 points in the entire opening stanza. According to the Michigan ath- letics department, it was the fewest points a top-25 team scored against an unranked team in one half since the 2008 season. Nebraska was held without a field goal for 14 minutes at one point — and scored just one in the half's fi- nal 17 minutes — while Michigan opened up the game with a 21-1 run. "They're a great offensive team, Senior guard Carmen Reynolds is U-M's all-time leader for three-pointers, with 193 and count- ing as of Feb. 14. 58-50, but Michigan closed out the game from there. "Any win in this conference is ab- and I really thought we'd have a tough time stopping them," Michi- gan head coach Kevin Borseth said after the game. "We had a couple different zone defenses that we threw at them, because they're tough. Their kids missed some shots, some open threes. "The first half, we played great. We PHOTO BY PER KJELDSEN took it right at them. It wasn't until five minutes before the game started that we determined exactly what we wanted to do offensively. The hard- est thing to do against [Nebraska] is just to make a pass. Our kids did a great job of getting to the basket, creating some rhythm shots and got us rolling." At the break, Michigan had built a 32-12 lead. The Cornhuskers climbed back, helped by a 20-0 run of their own in the second half, to cut the lead to 102 THE WOLVERINE MARCH 2012 solutely huge," Borseth said. "I don't care who you beat. It can make a dif- ference in terms of who is going to win the conference or what that does [for the NCAA Tournament]. I have learned these conference things come down to the last week to see what happens because conference play is always really difficult for everybody. "Nebraska being new to the confer- her career, such highlights have been commonplace — but this particular clip was special. Three days prior, in Madison, Wis., Reynolds had sunk her 183rd career bucket from downtown, making her the new program record-holder for three-pointers. The shot was replayed again, and ence, nobody really knows anything about Nebraska. On the other hand, they don't know a lot about us either. … Any win is a good win. We will take any win we can get." CARMEN REYNOLDS BREAKS THREE-POINT RECORD verines' 79-68 win over Northwest- ern Feb. 2, a shot of senior guard Carmen Reynolds draining a three- pointer flashed across the high-defi- nition jumbotron. Over the course of During a short timeout in the Wol- the crowd in Crisler Arena, cheered. "I don't think it's really hit me, yet," Reynolds said. Head coach Kevin Borseth was re- lieved to see the record finally fall. "She's had that laying over her head the whole year," Borseth said. "It's nothing but records, records, records, and it's in her head. And all of a sudden, it's like Derek Jeter try- ing to get his 3,000th hit. You have a tough time getting it because you're so anxious to do it, it almost works against you. "Well, that's over with. Hopefully tonight was a good sign that that was done, and it's off her mind now." And it seemingly has.